Day 2: "The First Time Hearing About Black Friday" September 1, 2009

          As we sat there waiting, we were instructed to change into our "Go Fasters". This required us to pull them from our already bulging C-Bags. So we did. We got the command to put our civilian shoes into the brown bag we carried with us from Day 1. By now all of our civilian gear and everything that we brought with us to Parris Island, was in this bag. We were told to throw away the box the "Go Fasters" came in, in a big brown plastic bag. Then, 2 recruits were accompanied by a Drill Instructor to take it to the dumpster. When the Drill instructor returned, we were instructed to write our names and social security numbers on the bag in sharpie. Then we were each given which platoon we would be in. For me this number was 2080 2nd Battalion Gulf Company. We also wrote that on the bag. After we were done, we were told to leave everything where it was and get into formation. From there, we went on to another building for Medical Screening.

         Medical Screening took forever. We went through the process of getting shot after shot. Every recruit got shots in the arms and one in the butcheek. The shot in the buttcheek was by far the worst. This shot was the most painful, and after we got it and the contents of the shot kicked in, we all felt like we had a baseball in our buttcheek. Not a great feeling I assure you because it lasted for days. After we all finished with Medical, we were brought back to the empty squadbay where all our gear was. We all thought it would just be more waiting till another Drill Instructor would come and tell us where we had to go next. But we were wrong, A Drill Instructor burst into the squadbay and shouted, "GIVE ME SIX MOTHERFUCKIN RECRUITS RIGHT NOW!!!". Shocked by how quickly he came in and said that, we all looked around not moving. This was a mistake because the Drill Instructor became even more angry. He ordered us to stand up and to sit down multiple times. The Drill Instructor said, "GOOD!!! NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO THE DRILL INSTRUCTOR. SIT YOUR ASSES DOWN!! NOW GET THE FUCK UP!! NOW SIT DOWN!! NOW GET BACK UP!!!" This went on for about 5 minutes. When he finally stopped, he asked for 6 recruits again. The whole lot of us rushed towards the Drill Instructor. He said with a mean look on his face, "GOOD NOW YOU'RE STARTIN TO GET IT!!". Then he picked 6 recruits and they all quickly rushed out of the squadbay in a single file line.
          As we waited there, we quietly discussed amongst ourselves what might be happening to the 6 recruits the Drill Instructor took with him. We pondered, getting yelled at, getting beat up, or doing something completely crazy. But we were wrong. About 15 minutes after they had left, they returned, each recruit with a palate of white boxes. They stacked them up where the Drill Instructor told them to, then left again. But this time they came back in with 2 cases of Gatorade. The moment we satw this, we could feel the morale of the group go from super low to just a little higher.
          The Drill Instructor told the 6 recruits to pass one white box and one gatorade to each of us. He instructed us that when we receive these boxes we were to put them on the ground in front of us and do not touch them. Then he gave us the command to sit down. In bootcamp there's a saying, "There's always one." This pertained to a recruit in this moment in time because he had to know what was in the box. So he started touching it. Right as the recruit was about to open the box, the Drill Instructor saw him and yelled loudly as he approached the recruit, "WHAT THE FUCK RECRUIT? CAN'T FOLLOW SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS CAN YOU? HAND OVER YOUR FUCKIN BOX AND GATORADE RIGHT NOW!!". The recruit handed them to him and was told to stand up behind us. The Drill Instructor then said, "IS THERE ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO OPEN THEIR FUCKIN BOX??? THERE'S ALWAYS ONE FUCKIN RECRUIT AS YOU CAN SEE!!!". He stood there and waited for us to say something but we didn't. He then gave us the order to open up these boxes. As we opened them up he explained to us that they were box-chow. Inside it was a wrapped sandwich, chips, a sweet, rasins, 2 hardboiled eggs, and some tiny packets of salt and pepper. He then instructed us to eat, and we did without question, as the one recruit stood behind us watching us eat.
          After everyone was done eating we were moved to what looked like a classroom. Here we were given our SRB's. aka: Service Record Books. Along with our SRB's we were given a series of documents, which consisted of The GI Bill, SGLI, and records of family history etc. One page at a time we were instructed to fill these out to the best of our ability. We sat here for hours, receiving page after page of information needed for our SRB's. As the day slowly turned to night, we finished all of the paperwork given to us and placed our SRB's in alplabetical order in the crates they came in. We were then moved yet again back to the empty squadbay. It was hard to stay awake this time as we sat there looking around at one another, waiting for more word on what was to be done next, and listening to other Drill Instructors converse outside of the squadbay.
          We only had one more day will we would meet our Drill Instructors. Other Drill Instructors would come in and have us ask them questions about what was to come, so they could keep us awake. They answered question after question, yelling at recruits who woulsd ask stupid questions. Then a really muscular black man came in. He was a Drill Instructor too. He sat in the chair we were all sitting around and told us loudly , "A RECRUIT BETTER ASK ME A QUESTION RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!!!". The recruit behind me stood up stated his name and asked, "When will we be in our own squadbay?" The Big Drill Instructor gave us a sinister look and lowered his head so that his smokey just barely covered his eyes. He looked so evil and he only said 2 words. He said, "BLACK FRIDAY". I felt something inside me, I believe it was fear because I started to shake. I knew I was scared. It was the way he looked at us. It made us imagine what kind of hell we would go through in the coming weeks and we could tell he was feeding off of our fear as he left, giving us menacing looks. That was the last time we saw that drill instructor for the rest of the night. 

~~~Journey Continues on Day 3~~~